Soul Edge

On December 20, 1996, Soul Edge was ported to the Sony PlayStation for the Japanese market. A limited special edition came with the Namco Joystick controller. An official tribute book Soul Edge Official Fan Book (ソウルエッジ オフィシャルファンブック／年代記) was published in the Chronicle series by Famitsu on March 31, 1997.[15]

The port kept the Soul Edge Ver. II roster of ten characters and added five unlockable characters, including SoulEdge, the final boss of the game. Other PlayStation-specific features include:

• A new costume for each character, chosen from various works sent by fans, giving each one a total of three different costumes, plus two color variations for the Player 1 and Player 2 costumes. It also includes—besides the standard Arcade mode—VS mode, Survival, Team Battle, Time Attack, and Training modes.
• A new RPG-styled mode called Edge Master mode, which works as a kind of story mode for the ten initial characters. The mode presents the selected character's story as a book, while the player moves in a map to various locations and fights in battles, sometimes with handicap rules. Generally, each chapter of the book rewards the player with a weapon.
• An opening CGI cinematic and individual endings done using the game's engine rather than still images as in its sequels Soulcalibur and Soulcalibur II. Each of the ten normally selectable characters have two endings, usually one happy ending and another tragic ending. These endings are accessible by pressing a special button/button sequence during certain times, indicated by black bars moving away, while others involve a short minigame, such as Mitsurugi avoiding gunshots. This type of ending was finally brought back in Soulcalibur III.
• The inclusion of seven extra weapons per character, which have different designs and statistics, composed of Power (inflicts more damage), Defense (receives less damage), Strength (damage dealt with enemy's weapon gauge), Durability (resistance of player's weapon gauge), and Weight (changes character's speed). Certain weapons also have a special ability, such as the ability to damage through defense or restore/drain the player's health.
• The inclusion of three different in-game soundtracks to choose from: the original arcade soundtrack, a studio-recorded version of the arcade soundtrack called "Arrange Soundtrack" and the Khan Super Session, made expressly for the home version.
• In the English version, all non-Asian characters have their English voice as default. (The concept of speaking different languages was followed by Tekken 4 since the character Julia Chang from Tekken 3 speaks in her ending.)

Versions labeled Soul Blade came out in 1997. In the North American version, clothes were added to Sophitia in the opening cutscene where she would have been nude.[19] In the European version, Li Long's pair of nunchaku were changed to a three-section staff, since BBFC guidelines at the time banned the depiction of nunchaku.[20][21]

Two soundtrack CDs were released for the game: Soul Edge Original Soundtrack - Khan Super Session and Super Battle Sound Attack Soul Edge.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Soul Edge on their March 15, 1996 issue as being the second most-successful arcade game of the month.[35] On the annual 1996 Gamest chart, Soul Edge was the 20th highest-grossing arcade game in Japan that year.[36] The arcade game was more successful in the United States, where it became one of the top five highest-grossing arcade conversion kits of 1996.[37] Despite this, it was not able to achieve the same level of arcade success as Namco's popular Tekken series. According to Next Generation magazine, Soul Edge "enjoyed less success than it deserved" in arcades.[33]

Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of Soul Edge Version II, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "there is still the slight control delay, but character movement is still fluid and seamless, and the trailing slashes of light in the wake of weapon movement is as gorgeous as ever."[38] The PlayStation conversion, Soul Blade, was a bestseller in the UK.[39] Due to its popularity, the game has been re-released as part of the PlayStation Greatest Hits, the PlayStation Platinum range, and the PlayStation The Best series.

The PlayStation game received very positive reviews. It holds aggregated scores of 91% on GameRankings[22] and 89/100 on Metacritic,[23] including high ratings by IGN ("extremely fun, and has just enough new elements to make it worth playing multiple times"),[31] and GameSpot ("a great fighting game with its share of flaws").[40] Next Generation praised it for "filling in all the blanks with great gameplay, superb characters, unique graphics, and combines them into one solid package."[32] They later commended the PlayStation port for retaining all the characters, levels, graphics, and gameplay from the arcade version.[33] GameFan called it "without a doubt the most stunning graphical fighting feast ever to grace any console."[41] The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly particularly applauded the full motion video intro and the new story mode.[42] They awarded it "Best Intro" in their 1998 Video Game Buyer's Guide.[43] A reviewer for GamePro stated: "Bow down to the new king of fighters, and the first gotta-play-it game of the year."[44]

In 1997, PSM named Soul Edge as the fourth top game on the PlayStation,[45] and Electronic Gaming Monthly listed the PlayStation version as a runner-up for "Fighting Game of the Year" (behind Street Fighter Collection) and "Best Music" (behind PaRappa the Rapper).[46] PSU listed this game as the sixth "PSone classic" most deserving to be remade for the PlayStation 3 in 2011.[47] That same year, Complex ranked Soul Edge as the 19th best fighting game of all time.[48]

The PlayStation version's opening sequence won the SIGGRAPH '97 award for the best game video of 1996.[49] It was also included on the list of the ten all-time best game cinematics by Cheat Code Central in 2012.[50]